Fonds consists of the personal papers of John Norris, including family papers, correspondence of both a personal and professional nature, notes of academic articles, lecture and class notes, as well as several photographs of Norris and his family. Fonds has been organized into seven series: Correspondence series; Family series; Political Career series; Hannah Institute series, Research Materials and Publications series; Teaching series; and Photographs series. Materials are arranged in alphabetical order unless otherwise indicated.

Fonds consists of textual records and published materials produced or acquired by Keith Ralston primarily through his historical research and other professional activities, along with a small selection of personal materials. It is arranged in the following ten series, which largely reflect how the records arrived in their original order: Department of History, Thesis, Dictionary of Canadian Biography, Cowichan Fishing Case, Public Record Office, Hudson’s Bay Company Research, Research, Associations, Personal, and Day Books.

Fonds consists of textual and audiovisual material relating to the production of the movie "Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media", released in 1992, and the companion book by Mark Achbar published in 1994. The filmmakers chose to capture
the majority of their work on film, rather than video, for several reasons. Firstly, during the 1980’s, video resolution was significantly lower than film negative and in an effort to ensure the image resolution was high film was chosen as the predominant medium.
As well, the NFB (National Film Board) was equipped primarily for film shooting, processing and editing. Finally, the motivation to participate in film festivals, which wanted film rather than video, compelled the filmmakers to use film as their medium. Some small format video, captured using rented broadcast quality video gear, was used for long talks or events which would have been uneconomical to shoot in film. The audiovisual material includes original camera negatives, audio and video tapes and sound bites used as research material and in the making of the film as well as some post-production rough cuts, alternative versions and promotional material relating to the distribution of the film and subsequent video. The textual material includes pre and post-production materials as well as production logs and graphical materials. Much of the post-production material relates to the promotion of the film and the media coverage of the film and of Noam Chomsky.